These include Galapagos giant tortoise Geochelone nigra (VU), with twenty subspecies on different islands, all of which are endangered, terrestrial iguanas Conolophus subcristatus (VU) and C. pallidus (VU) and marine iguana Amblyrhynchus cristatus (VU) which is the world's only sea-going lizard and feeds on seaweed.

If the plantation owners of Virginia, the merchants of Boston, the Anglican Church leadership, the sea-going trading industry, or the bankers in New York got too powerful and dominated everyone else, our democracy would become warped and twisted up, and we would be in a world of trouble.

This is a gripping retrospective on the Titanic disaster seen through the eyes of the wealthy ship's owner, including the two agonizing inquiries that Ismay had to attend in New York and London, his demolition by the popular press, and an inspired interweaving of the moral themes of guilt and responsibility from Joseph Conrad's sea-going novel "Lord Jim."